Joe Biden Says He Is The ‘Most Qualified Person In The Country To Be President’

Former Vice President Joe Biden addressed speculation that he might run for president in 2020 by saying that he would consider it if his family is “ready,” but added that he believes he is the most qualified person in the country for the office. On a book tour for the paperback release of his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad, the 76-year-old also said that he would do whatever it takes to help the 2020 candidate win, whoever it is, because “we can’t have four more years,” the Missoula Current reports.

“I’ll be as straight with you as I can. I think I’m the most qualified person in the country to be president,” he said to a crowd at the University of Montana. “The issues that we face as a country today are the issues that have been in my wheelhouse, that I’ve worked on my whole life.”

He went on to add that regardless of what happens, the decision will be made as a family. He added that he believes his years of experience are undeniable.

“I’ve been doing this my whole adult life, and the issues that are the most consequential relating to the plight of the middle class and our foreign policy are things that I have — even my critics would acknowledge, I may not be right but I know a great deal about it,” the Scranton native said.

Interviewer and New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler pointed out that there are several reasons people might oppose his running in 2020, such as his age, the amount of money required and noted that he is referred to as the “gaffe machine.” Biden conceded that he may make gaffes from time to time, but said that is preferable to a “guy who can’t tell the truth.”

Biden’s book is what he calls a guide using finding purpose as a way to get through challenges. In it, he speaks of his experience with bullying in Catholic school as a child for his stutter and watching his father lose his business. It was events like these that drove the former vice president to work during the 1960s for civil rights and as a public defender.

At the age of 29 he ran and won a Senate seat, but just a short while later lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. He found purpose in his two surviving sons and turned to public service as a way to bring hope to other people. In 2015, Biden’s son Beau passed away from cancer, which is one of the reasons that he did not run for president in 2016, he says.

Now, he sees a 2020 bid for the office as a way to bring hope to people once again, but he wouldn’t make the decision unless his family – including his two grandchildren left without a father after Beau died – was “ready.”

Many are taking Biden’s statements as a strong possibility that he will run.